


Happy

by evieeden



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Minor Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Multi, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 14:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8755615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evieeden/pseuds/evieeden
Summary: Natasha and Tony try to work out why Steve is so happy lately.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This advent fic is mostly on time for once. Yay!  
> It's a Stucky number cos I love them, but also has Natasha and Tony being their weird half-bros, half-flirting, which I also love.  
> Again this one is more of a moment than an extended narrative, but I hope you enjoy reading it.  
> Thanks and happy 4th December.

There was something different about Steve.

Natasha knew it. Clint knew it. Even Tony had picked up on it in some small way. He kept giving Steve these sideways looks, like he couldn’t understand why Cap was suddenly not reacting to his lewd comments and crude jokes.

“What’s the point,” Tony confronted her one day, “of teasing Cap if doesn’t blush? He’s no fun anymore.”

“He stopped blushing after the third time you told him a dirty joke and then laughed at him, Tony.” Natasha continued to calmly strip her gun for cleaning at the kitchen table, enjoying the nervous looks Stark kept shooting her.

“Well where’s the fun in that?” he whined, propping his chin in his hand. His eyes followed her hands carefully and even though she knew Stark knew how to disassemble and reassemble weaponry competently, she also knew that he was taking in the fluid movements of her hands and assessing how he could apply the practiced movements to himself.

“I think he doesn’t want you to have fun,” she smirked, “particularly at his expense.”

“Boo!” Tony produced a tablet out of nowhere and immediately began to tapping on it. Natasha eyed the screen warily when she saw a 3-D image of her hands and arms appear, but settled back into her chair as he began to program the specs for a new pair of gauntlets for her around them.

He grinned as he manipulated the dimensions, clearly reading her body language. “Please. As if I could take you without the suit.”

Natasha allowed a small smile to curl up the side of her mouth and shrugged and they both went back to their respective activities silently.

She waited quietly, impressed when Tony lasted a whole five minutes before he broke the silence.

“But why is he different now?”

She didn’t even pretend to not understand who he was talking about. “He’s used to the way you talk now. Four years in this century has acclimatised him to modern speaking by now.”

“You know what I mean.” Tony stopped his tapping and looked up at her. “Not just the blushing. He’s been different lately. Weird. You’ve noticed it, you must have.”

“He has been spending a lot of time lately looking for Bucky.”

Tony pulled a face. That was one argument that had arisen out of the ashes of the leaked Hydra files. On a rational level, Tony understood that Barnes wasn’t entirely in control of himself when he had engineered the deaths of Howard and Maria Stark. But Steve was entirely too vocal with his defence of Barnes when Tony was dealing with the truth behind his parents’ fate.

The two men had patched it up after Thor, of all people, had negotiated with both of them, but it was an uneasy truce when it came to the subject of Steve’s long lost best friend.

Tony wasn’t letting his distaste for the subject dissuade him from the topic though. “But that’s been going on for a while. What’s changed? It’s almost like…”

“He’s happy,” Natasha interrupted him.

“Exactly!” Tony banged emphatically on his tablet. “What’s he got to be happy about? It’s creepy.”

Natasha looked up and raised an eyebrow at his statement. She enjoyed the way Tony caved under her look.

“Well, it is. Cap’s not supposed to be all whistling and cheery. Where’s the responsibility and anger towards the patriarchy? Where’s the towering sense of injustice? Where’s the pining over his long lost Barnesicle? And by the way, since when has _that_ been going on? ‘Cos my dad never mentioned anything like that in all of his ‘back in day’ stories and let me tell you, as highly dependent on Rhodey as I am, I don’t think I’ve ever pined about him in quite the same way. It’s almost like…”

“It’s almost like he’s not pining after Bucky anymore.”

“Right.” Tony pointed a finger at her and then frowned. “Wait… what? What do you know?”

Natasha shrugged and then began reassembling the cleaned gun. “Nothing. Nothing that I’ve been told anyway. However, the last time I visited I did see a pair of black combat boots two sizes too big to be Steve’s and part of a deconstructed Dragunov in the sink.”

“Why would you put gun parts in the sink?”

Natasha rolled her eyes at the digression and Tony blinked back at her.

“Just wondering.” He frowned. “So I guess that means that Barnes is back and staying with Cap. Wow! The patriot and the assassin of American dreams shacking up together.”

“I don’t think they are.” Natasha tucked the gun away somewhere Tony was sure he wouldn’t find even if he patted her down – which he would never do for fear of losing both hands – and became calmly and precisely cleaning away her tools. “I think Barnes just appears and disappears. I’m not even sure that Steve is aware he’s there half the time.”

Tony pursed his lips. “Okay. Creepy, but okay.” He thought about it. “Wait…what? How does that work?”

Natasha stood up and headed towards the door. “I’m pretty sure that Bucky is starting to remember who Steve was to him, he just doesn’t know how to deal with it.” She spun on her heel and dealt Tony an inscrutable look. “They didn’t exactly teach us how to have normal relationships in the KGB.”

This time it was Tony who shrugged as he abandoned his tablet and trailed after her. “Normal’s overrated. So what…Barnes doesn’t know how to be a real boy around Cap?”

“He’s testing him. Making sure he’s welcome before he puts roots down. Visiting the apartment while Steve’s not there to see if he notices and if he does, whether he’s safe there.”

Tony thought about it as they stepped into the elevator. “So basically Barnes is like a stray cat. He wants Steve to be his crazy cat-lady owner, but he wants to decide when Cap can finally adopt him.”

Natasha arched an eyebrow. “That’s a terrible analogy, but yes. He’s testing the ground, putting out feelers before he comes in from the cold.”

“But he let you see him?” Tony was confused.

“No.” Natasha seemed unconcerned by this. “He was already gone…probably from the moment I exited my car on the street… but he let me know he was there.”

The elevator dinged as it hit the gym floor and Tony found himself once again trailing after Natasha like a lost puppy. Hey, Pepper was away and he was bored.

“And the point of that was…?”

“He knows I’m going to side with Steve against him, so he let me know that he’s back around so I can be on my guard. Steve’s not the best at that when it comes to Barnes.”

“No, he isn’t,” Tony agreed. He stopped when they reached the door to the gym. Tony would follow his fellow Avengers to most places, but an area of physical exertion where they could all run rings around him…

He’d stick to his boxing ring with Happy.

“So it’s some kind of secret spy code thing then? Leaving your weaponry in people’s sinks.”

Natasha gave him a look that implied he was very stupid, which was absolutely not true, he just didn’t have first-hand experience of Russian-assassin thought processes.

“It shows he’s trusting Steve more and more.”

Tony thought about that.

“So Cap hasn’t seen him yet, but Barnes has been leaving clues around the apartment that he’s ready to come in, like hairballs under the bed and scratch marks on the counters?”

“Something like that. If I’ve seen the signs, then Steve definitely has too.”

Tony did not understand these crazy people at all. “Then how does Cap know what that means?”

There was that look again. Tony could learn to hate that look, even if he’d never admit it to Natasha.

“Because if Barnes didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be. Steve may be an idiot when it comes to Barnes, but he’s not stupid when it comes to tactics. He knows that Bucky will come in eventually, which is more than what he was running on before.”

“Hence why he’s happy.”

“You know,” Natasha looked thoughtful, something that never boded well for Tony, “you’re a lot smarter than you look.”

She smiled at having the last word and disappeared into the gym.

Tony stood at the door for a long moment trying to work out if he could get away with replying, but then gave up.

On his way to the elevator, he passed Steve, who was whistling cheerfully even as he wrapped tape around his hands. “Morning Tony.”

Yeah, too weird.

Although a small part of Tony thought that if just the possibility of Barnes coming in from the cold made Cap that cheerful, he would pay good money to see his reaction when Barnes was finally right there with him again.

An ecstatic Cap? Scary thought indeed.


End file.
